[ccalvert]

I think the gift that some upper-middle-class kids get that others don't always get is a belief in their ability to succeed. You also need a strong work ethic, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as a work ethic if a person has no faith in their ability to succeed.

Perhaps it looks a bit like this:

- Some people you can't keep down no matter what you do. These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years.

- Some people will succeed if given the opportunity to succeed. That is, if you give them a scholarship or financial aid or if their parents pay for their education.

- Some people will succeed if you give them a big push. Take them to the financial aid office and help them fill out the form, ply them with encouraging words when they want to give up at midterms or finals, etc.

- Some people won't succeed no matter what you do. Usually, because they have so little faith in themselves that they give up even when success is all but guaranteed.

So yes, government programs are needed to get enough citizens across the finish line. But I don't think this is really about class, I think it is about motivating people -- helping them learn to believe in themselves.

[calt]

Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.

My belief in my ability to succeed was briefly shattered by my dad's employment situation. He was a well qualified engineer laid off from manufacturing. That made us struggle.

I was always thinking about money and feeling the need to optimize for $2 meals instead of $4 meals, and wondering if my car would hold in long enough to be able to get me to school in a week. These are things that only your first, most motivated, category of people will overcome.

I didn't overcome these obstacles. I temporarily dropped out. Don't tell me that I just needed to believe in myself more.

My story only has a happy ending because state schools are cheap and engineering internships are paid.

[pwinnski]

I didn't read a "just" in the previous poster.

I do believe that belief or trust is a necessary but inadequate precondition to success. Believing in yourself is not enough to help you succeed, but not believing in yourself is enough to help you not succeed.

As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief.

[rectang]

> As a society, we do a very poor job giving people that trust or belief.

So, do you address that with pep talks, proselytizing about "meritocracy", and "tough love"; or by actually addressing economic insecurity through safety nets that allow people to make a mistake or two without crashing and burning?

[pwinnski]

I think it's rational for people to not have trust or belief given our society as it is. So I think we should address the root causes of economic insecurity structurally rather than cheerleading people who have no reason to feel secure.

Empty cheerleading gives us no-doc jumbo loans at sub-prime rates... until the music stops and bad debts are revealed as the bad debts they are.

[jimbokun]

"These people do things like work full time, go to school in the evenings, and graduate from college in four years."

That's not a thing anymore. Working full time at the wages you can earn without a college degree, won't pay for college tuition, especially not in four years.

The biggest way to help inequality would be to radically bring down the cost of a college education. Not loans, which just place lower and middle income families in even greater financial risk. A fully funded public university system with low tuition, like many states used to have not too long ago.

[Terr_]

> belief in their ability to succeed

Or an objective economic capability to fail-and-retry. (As opposed to fail-and-starve.)